[Surgery of intracranial metastases of bronchial origin]

Forty-six out of a series of 76 patients with intracranial metastases from lung cancer underwent a surgical operation for complete macroscopic resection. 44 cases presented with a single metastasis. In 2 cases, there were 2 cerebral metastases. Most of the lesions were situated in the frontal lobe (41%). In more than one half of cases, the primary lung cancer was squamous carcinoma. The mean survival was 9 months. It was shorter in the case of anaplastic cancers (6 months) and adenocarcinomas (8 months) than in the squamous carcinomas (12 months). The five patients still alive 2 years after surgery all belong to this histological group. The results suggest that surgical treatment of single cerebral metastases from lung cancer, in the absence of extracranial dissemination, allows a considerable improvement in the quality and duration of the survival.